Since I arrived to live in the United States, I’ve been extremely lucky, since I’ve met people from half the planet. Today, among my friends, I find new destinations for trips in the future, since the more I learn about their countries, the more I want to win the lottery and just travel the World. But, since to date that hasn’t happened yet -I should probably start getting a lottery ticket, right?- it’s also true that we have made a pause to the speedy way of traveling thousands of miles to go from one Pole to the other. Hence, at least for now, I am traveling each time I sit at the table. Or at least that’s what I try.
About 18 months ago, one of these friends I was telling you about at the beginning of my text started to send emails and texts to encourage several of us to organize a cooking club. With a little bit of effort and commitment we got together about 10 different nationalities. It would be an awesome chance to discover new dishes and refresh our home menus, we thought. We all like to cook nice things. The decision had been made. We would get together once a month. The third Friday of each month we would block it for nothing else and we would get together to cook lunch. Tasting the delicacies prepared would be the cherry on top. We all chose our favorite dishes and we made requests as well. We wanted to learn specific stuff from other cuisines.
Cindy is Peruvian, but her family is Chinese. Also, know that her mother and her grandmother are known to be excellent cooks. When she hosted the group, she shared this dish, and while she was preparing it she insisted that the versatility of it was that even though there is a list of vegetables to include, one can add whatever is at hand. Now, I think that this is one of the reasons why everyone in the group has incorporated it into the family meals without hesitation. I think it has received the accolades as the big blockbuster of the season. I hope you enjoy it as much as we all do.
Now, because we are looking for this versatility and we don’t want to make trips to the grocery store for one or another ingredient, I am including my personal notes on what I did to make do and succeed at home at dinnertime.
Ingredients
- 50 g Lo Mein noodles
- 450 g chicken tenderloins cut in fajita style, I used ground turkey because it was what I had at hand and it worked really well
- 50 g shiitake mushrooms, finely sliced (we had none at home, so I used cremini)
- 1 red bell pepper, in julienne
- 150 g snow peas
- 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
- Fresh ginger, finely chopped
- Baby corn, optional
- Broccoli, optional
- 2-3 scallions, in julienne (to decorate, but I made bigger cuts this time)
- Cilantro leaves, to decorate at the end
- 1 tsp cornstarch, I used tapioca starch and it works equally well
- 120 ml chicken stock
- 3 tbsp soy sauce, I use the low-sodium version
- 3 tbsp oyster sauce
- Sesame oil
- Salt & white pepper
To Prepare
- Before anything else, prepare all the vegetables. Cut them up and set them aside.
- In a pot, have some water come up to a boil. Whenever you have a rolling boil, blanche the lo mein noodles, strain them and drizzle a little sesame oil. Just enough for them to not stick one another. Set them aside.
- In a bowl, season the chicken with salt and pepper, and add a little of the corn or tapioca starch.
- In a Wok or a medium-depth pot, drizzle a little sesame oil and start to fry the chicken. When ready, set it aside and start frying the vegetable, add the garlic and ginger.
- Lastly, add the chicken back, mix in the sauces, and the rest of the starch diluted into a little fresh water.
- Separately, lightly fry the noodles and serve on a platter. Incorporate the chicken with the vegetables on top and decorate with the scallions and cilantro leaves.
